Kalam Cosmological Argument - Unraveling the Origins of the Universe

            In the annals of philosophical and theological discourse, the Kalam Cosmological Argument has transcended time as a formidable line of reasoning. With its roots tracing back to the works of renowned Islamic philosopher, Al-Ghazali, and later embraced and championed by modern Christian philosopher, William Lane Craig, this argument has withstood the test of centuries and continues to captivate minds seeking to comprehend the enigma of the universe's inception. Rooted in two fundamental premises, as we embark on this intellectual journey, we shall unravel the mysteries of existence and delve into the timeless wisdom of the past, blending it with contemporary insights to grasp the essence of this perplexing argument.
 
Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore the universe has a cause.
 
            Through investigating the nature of the cause of the universe one can deduce certain properties of said cause. The first premise of the argument is an axiomatic a priori principle, or that it is known through reason alone rather than empirical observation although this can be done for the first premise. It is intuitively obvious to a sound mind that something cannot come from nothing as the Greek philosopher Parmenides states, “Nothing comes from nothing” (ex nihilo nihil fit) and in modern times the skeptic philosopher, David Hume, also admits, “I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause”. As for the particles that seemingly come from nothing on a quantum level, the quantum vacuum is not a philosophical nothingness, or something that lacks any attributes or properties, it is a sea of fluctuating field of energy that produces particles.
            If one has a pen, for example, it is made of plastic and has ink. One may further ask where did the plastic or the ink come from? If it comes from crude oil and dye, one may further ask where did the oil and the dye come from. Eventually, the line of questioning will reach atoms then quarks then energy, and one may further ask once again where did they come from? Each step has a cause and thus requires an explanation.
            One may argue that the energy that eventually made the atoms that made the oil that made the plastic when made the pen is eternal despite the form of the pen itself having a cause. In response, the second premise of the cosmological argument states that the universe has a cause as well. The evidence for the second premise can be either philosophical or through the scientific method such as the Big Bang Theory. As for the former, the first argument is known as an argument against an actual infinity and the second argument is forming an actual infinite through a successive addition. An actual infinity is not something that has a beginning and continues infinitely, this would be called a potential infinity. An actual infinity, for example, is the set of all actual numbers. Imagine there is a sun that has two planets orbiting it from eternity past, one planet is the earth which orbits the sun once every year. The second planet, mars, orbits the sun twice a year. If one asks how many times mars has orbited the sun from eternity past, the answer is infinity. Likewise, if one asks how many times the earth has orbited the sun from eternity past, the answer is the same despite orbiting at half the rate. One should expect mars to have twice the number of orbits as the earth – this is the absurdity and impossibility of an actual infinity existing in actuality as it results in a contradiction. Perhaps in mathematics it can work but not in actuality. Therefore, the universe has a beginning as if it did not there would be an actual infinity of events or time that has elapsed and it has been shown that actual infinities cannot exist. As for the second explanation, actual infinity through successive addition, imagine if you are reading this article at this very moment and an actual infinity exists going back in time infinitely, if the moment of you reading the article is happening that would entail one traveling an actual infinity which is impossible as infinity has no immediate predecessor. Perhaps an easier example, imagine you walk into a room and see a row of dominoes falling one after the other. You notice that the last domino falls and wonder what caused it to fall. Upon further investigation, you find that each domino falling caused the next one to fall, leading back to the first domino being pushed. If there was an actual infinity of dominos falling it is obvious to the sound mind that there must be a first domino being pushed for the last domino in the set to fall. There is no answer to infinity minus one. The great German mathematician David Hilbert states, “The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought...”.
            It has been made evident that the cause has to be eternal to avoid the actual infinity problem. The effect of the eternal cause is the universe which is temporal as it had a beginning. Now, there must be a will to this eternal cause rather than it being naturalistic. Imagine that there is water that boils at 100°C at room temperature. Now imagine that water eternally exists at that temperature, the question is if it is boiling eternally as well. The answer is clearly yes. An eternal cause has an eternal effect and a temporal cause has a temporary effect. However, for there to be a temporal effect from an eternal cause there must be a will. For example, if there is someone sitting in a chair from eternity past, they can freely choose to stand up at any moment and sit back down, therefore, there is an eternal cause with a temporal effect. Therefore, in the same way, this can be applied to the universe. A thing with a will can be classified as a personal agent and therefore, from all the previous arguments, it is shown that there must be an eternal personal agent that created the universe. It follows that this eternal personal agent who created all matter must be immensely powerful and it must also follow that due to the complexity of the universe, it must be immensely intelligent. This is beginning to sound like a theistic definition of God. In philosophy, Occam's razor is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements and by this, if it is necessary for there to be at least one personal agent then the simplest answer is the correct one as there is nothing necessary about there being two or three personal agents. More arguments against polytheism will be explored in further blog posts.